The Academy Awards voters are not without appreciation for Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch of Nine Inch Nails. Maybe the band is extremely aggressive live, and most Oscar voters would not choose to listen. But when it comes to creating fantastic scores for movies, Reznor and Finch do that consistently.
In fact, they have won two Oscars for Best Original Score. The first was for The Social Network in 2010, and the second for Soul in 2020. Still, the pair was surprisingly skipped at the 2025 Academy Awards event though their score for Challengers appeared to be a shoo-in. Perhaps the issue is that Academy Award voters have short memories and anything longer than six months might seem like five years ago.
Challengers came out in April 2024, and that was nearly a year ago. The film was met with mixed reviews but did decently well at the box office, and the score was excellent. What else would one expect from a composition by Reznor and Finch? Only, maybe voters forgot about the movie and the music.
Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch snubbed by 2025 Oscars voters
To make matters stranger, Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch won the award for Best Original Score at this month's Golden Globes for Challengers. They beat out the scores for Conclave, The Brutalist, The Wild Robot, Emilia Pérez, and Dune: Part Two. All of those movies except for Dune are among the nominees for the 2025 Academy Awards.
The other film nominated for an Oscar in 2025 for Best Score is Wicked, which is not altogether "original" as the musical has existed for decades. Are there a couple of new tunes? Maybe. But overall, the Wicked score is the same as it has been so it is not overly "original."
Reznor and Finch had to work harder than the people putting Wicked's music together because Reznor and Finch had to come up with new stuff all on their own. (No offense to Wicked...we love you!)
Again, the only reason Oscars voters left out Reznor and Finch is because their movie came out far too long ago. Maybe the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences needs to start having two awards shows each year if voters cannot remember films that came out before the summer. Otherwise, why should Reznor and Finch be snubbed?